Which way you will turn
While feeling that our love’s not your concern
It’s you that decides
No one around you will carry the blame for you
No one around you will love you today
And throw it all away
Everybody/Nobody (Day 2 Demo) (Take 1)
Sunday, May 05, 2024
All Things Must Pass . . . . . .
George Clooney on his beautiful singing voice! (feat.Dan Tyminski)!?
Man of Constant Sorrow the story . . . . . . .so funny!
The Men of Constant Sorrow... George Clooney and Dan Tyminski
more Tom Waits on writing songs . . . . .
Tom Waits: Those are the wild sounds. Songs are domesticated, complacent little creatures who will never get out in the wild again. I like my songs raw, with the pulp and seeds. Those are nutrients. It's not good to listen to too much highly processed music. It leads to heart attacks and apparently rheumatic fever.
As soon as the songs hear the crack of that rifle, they go running for cover. But I've usually got three days worth of food and a scope. You want to avoid recording the feathers and throwing away the bird, I guess. You do want something to be living in them. So you sneak up on them. Because the recording process involves putting something through a machine, you have to wonder what falls down into the filter. Sometimes we pull out that lint and make other songs. I thrive on pain and discomfort. I like misunderstandings. I think I have an auditory processing problem. I like when I hear a song from a radio far away and I mishear it. As it limps across, it gets interrupted by the tractor or an airplane or the wind.I like the missing pieces. I don't like things too tidy. Terry Gilliam heard the line "in a Portuguese saloon"(from The Part You Throw Away), and he thought I was saying, "On the porch, the geese salute." That's better! I hope more people misunderstand me.
Source: USA Today (USA), by Edna Gundersen.
Photograph: Robert Yager
Don's Tunes
Favourite actors : Frances McDormand
Photo taken in 2017 by Katy Grannan
I was often told that I wasn’t a thing. ‘She’s not pretty enough. She’s not tall enough. She’s not thin enough. She’s not fat enough.’ I thought, ‘O.K., someday you’re going to be looking for someone not, not, not, not, and there I’ll be.
- Frances McDormand
Happy Birthday, Miranda Richardson!
Miranda Richardson was born in Southport, Lancashire, and recalls "a cinema about 50 yards from my house. So Saturday mornings were spent with The ABC Minors: the Saturday cinema club with the theme song set to the tune of 'Blaze Away' by Abe Holzmann, a red ball bouncing over the lyrics so you could sing along. As I got older, I would go to the cinema by myself to watch matinees of westerns and historical Technicolor dramas."
Richardson joined the Manchester Library Theatre in 1979 as an assistant stage manager, followed by a number of appearances in repertory theatre. Her London stage debut was in Moving at the Queen's Theatre in 1981. She found recognition in the West End for a series of stage performances, ultimately receiving an Olivier Award nomination for her performance in A Lie of the Mind, and, in 1996, she appeared in the single-actor theatrical adaptation of Orlando at the Edinburgh Festival.
Queenie!
In 1985, Richardson made her film debut as Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom, in the biographical drama "Dance with a Stranger" (below). The story of Ellis has resonance in Britain because it provided part of the background to the extended national debates that led to the progressive abolition of capital punishment from 1965.
Following "Dance with a Stranger," Richardson turned down numerous parts in which her character was unstable or disreputable, including the Glenn Close role in 1987's "Fatal Attraction." In this period, she appeared in "Empire of the Sun" (1987), where she played Mrs. Victor.
Otehr film roles include Vanessa Bell in "The Hours" (2002), Lady Van Tassel in "Sleepy Hollow" (1999), and Patsy Carpenter in "The Evening Star" (1996). She also won acclaim for her performances in "The Crying Game" (1992) and "Enchanted April" (1991), for which she won a Golden Globe. She received Academy Award nominations for her performances in "Damage" (1992) and "Tom & Viv" (1994). British television fans will remember her as Queenie in the "Blackadder" series. (Wikipedia)
Katie Grace Harris - Bedlam Boys / Ghosts of Lulworth
so friend and neighbour Diamond Dave dropped by to say, if I liked Emily Barker had I heard this local lass?! . . . . . . coincidence is a strange bedfellow in my experience and I would call it . . . . Jungian synchronicity but check out the person on audio recording!!! Yup it’s ‘our’ Lukas Drinkwater (Emily’s husband!)
Bedlam Boys is the brand new track from my upcoming debut album. It's a contemporary rendition of a trad Folk song which can be traced back to a poem written in the 18th century about Bethlehem Hospital, London which was used to house patients suffering from mental health conditions. It is believed to be a satirical love song between 'Tom O Bedlam' and his lady 'Mad Maudlin'. Sign-up to my mailing list at Katie Grace Harris/ to be the first to hear updates, exclusive pre-order information and gig details or look me up on the below social platforms: Keeping in touch: W: https://www.katiegraceharris.com/ F:
/ kgraceharris I:
/ katiegraceharris T:
/ katiegraceharri 'Bedlam Boys' arranged by Katie Grace Harris Audio Recorded by Lukas Drinkwater at Polyphonic Recording Audio Mastered by Ian Stephenson at Simpson Street Studios Filming: Matt Fleming at Minus Tone: https://www.minustone.co.uk Location: Manor Farm, Ardley
"'Ghosts of Lulworth' is a single from my debut album 'The Toledo Sessions'. It is a song about Lulworth Cove which is a place I was once lucky enough to call home. Local stories tell of the ghosts of dancing girls who can sometimes be seen on the beach at dusk. WW2 soldiers guarding the beach were the most recent to report sightings. Standing there saying my goodbyes to the beach before heading abroad for work, I had the sense that many, many others had said their goodbyes on that very beach over the centuries and that I was standing shoulder to shoulder with the 'ghosts of times gone by’." Katie Grace Harris
Saturday, May 04, 2024
EMILY BARKER Live AT TRUCK [OXFORD] 3rd MAY 2024 - Album Launch ‘FRAGILE AS HUMANS'
Emily at TRUCK on launch day of Fragile As Humans - Oxford 3rd May 2024
Well last night was a highpoint of the year for me and finally got to see Emily Barker at my nearest record Store (TRUCK) and it was simply wonderful. Emily has the most staggering vocal range from the quiet intimacies of the first song to the strength of later vocalising, her voice soars and staggers, tantalises and hovers on the highest strongest notes, her voice is perhaps her greatest gift possessed of crystal clear strength and clarity like a mountain stream (!) seriously she has the most extraordinary range and power to her voice yet you dismiss the quiet voice at your peril for its emotional depth and strength will knock you for six if not careful! (the listening party I am not ashamed to admit reduced me to tears twice!) Her guitar playing fascinates too and her taking a moment to adjust to open tuning is brave mid-set it seemed to me! But it is her writing that so fascinates us all I think, her poetic depth and increasingly expressive voice is given to exploring loss, loneliness and grief here but it is not once maudlin or melancholic. Truly an emotional intelligence exploring the depths of its feeling
ASIDE : Why a record ‘store’? I have to say I don’t really get it. This playing in record shop windows. Her fifth appearance here we think?! On the record launch day of her new album FRAGILE AS HUMANS she can appear in a record shop and to a ‘crowd’ of about 20 including yours truly and it occurs to me later this is open to the public so anyone wondering past can just come in and a couple did. Whilst queuing to get in at 5.30 a couple asked if they could get a coffee (Truck is known for its side game of coffee bar a later edition to a little record shop in the heart of Oxford’s multicultural heartland of the Cowley Road) Now I had bought the vinyl deluxe in advance and was waiting patiently to get my hands upon it and listen to her sing finally and then to have it signed I hoped! I assumed this was true of everyone there but it was just open to all so nobody actually pays to see her!? I counted 17 of us at the outset and increased to twenty plus from people passing by (sic) How do such things make the artist money!? I really don’t get it. Anymore. I know I am now very old but it troubles me. Not everyone there had even listened to the album live chat launch party via Bandcamp!
Anyway I digress . . . . .
Emily Barker
At Truck OXFORD (5th appearance there?!)
20+ people!
Song list: as Emily points out this is the first time she has played any of these new tracks unaccompanied! From memory these included :
With Small We Start
Wild To Be Sharing This Moment
Call it a Day
Feathered Thing
Loneliness
Fragile as Humans
which song about first love, then her husband (Lukas0 and her beloved Dad x
Close: requests!
Nostalgia (of course perfect)
Blackbird
Maybe ten songs in an hour plus a signing and meet n greet
She started with the quietist of songs from her new album
Opening song - With Small We Start
then
Wild To Be Sharing This Moment . . . . . . (it was!)
This next as Emily explained inspired by this:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -That perches in the soul -And sings the tune without the words -And never stops - at all -from Emily Dickinson
Emily is a published poet herself now and I await her latest volume which looks really good too! From Broken Sleep Books : Where The Black Swans Swim
then the title track as she explained about three men in her life her childhood sweetheart, her husband (the wonderful Lukas Drinkwater) and her beloved Dad x
and of course finally this is where I came in watching dear Ken Branagh as Wallander Nostalgia (unaccompanied) it was later adapted and re-recorded by Emily with composer Marin Phipps for use as the theme to BBC TV crime drama what’s that 14 years ago!?
I have everything now I think! and what with finally seeing her sing live for us, another bucket list ticked off the list . . . . . . . . now I just need to see her with a backing band in concert!
Nostalgia...
Tram wires cross Melbourne skies
Cut my red heart in two
My knuckles bleed down Johnston street
On a door that shouldn’t be in front of me
Twelve thousand miles away from your smile
I’m twelve thousand miles away from me
Standing on the corner of Brunswick
Got the rain coming down and mascara on my cheek
Oh whisper me words in the shape of a bay
Shelter my love from the wind and the rain
Crow fly be my alibi
And return this fable on your wing
Take it far away to where gypsies play
Beneath metal stars by the bridge
Oh write me a beacon so I know the way
Guide my love through night and through day
Only the sunset knows my blind desire for the fleeting
Only the moon understands the beauty of love
When held by a hand like the aura of nostalgiacredits
released January 2, 2010
But she closed with
BLACKBIRD from her first album Photos. Fires. Fables and here a live version with beloved husband producer, bass player, guitarist, singer, songwriter and all round renaissance man, Lukas Drinkwater!
Blackbird
from Photos.Fires.Fables.
I’ll leave it there but this was truly an extraordinary experience and I should balance it out with a ‘proper’ concert in the venues she is playing later next year somewhere like my favourite live haunt Union Chapel or hopefully somewhere nearer home.
and she is also playing support to her old friend King Creosote
I have to add this did me in rather (i am sadly not as young as I was and no longer in my prime falling prey to a range of VERY boring conditions that will doubtless see me off!) and as I realise my health is not what it was, to stand for an hour despite kind souls in the crowd offering me a seat (sic!) I found myself jigging along and even singing along ( I kid you not! Emily taught us a chorus to join in with!?!) I would have liked to have stayed to chat more if it was possible and didn’t really want to leave but a motorbike ride home in the rain some 8 miles was enough and I collapsed in a happy heap when I got home.
Glorious stuff and she was so kind and gracious and lovely to chat with however briefly! . . . . . . .
New Album: yes and it is going to be amongst her very best, I would say top three (Dear River, Dark Murmuration of Words, and Sweet Kinda Blue) I had wanted to tell her that I listen to pretty much everything on a haphazard rotation basis but in terms of playlists found myself returning always to Dear River but then this was overtaken recently by Room 822 which she and Lukas recorded during lockdown waiting a fortnight’s clearance of the Covid quarantine in a hotel when they first got ‘home’ to Oz. Now I think there is a new contender . . . . . . .
Emily At TRUCK 3rd May 2024 - FRAGILE AS HUMANS launch day
Dylan of the Day | photograph by Ken Regan 1975
LOVE THIS PICTURE
Photo during the Rolling Thunder Revue, by Ken Regan (1975)
Romance in Durango
Hot chili peppers in the blistering sun
Dust on my face and my cape
Me and Magdalena on the run
I think this time we shall escape
Sold my guitar to the baker’s son
For a few crumbs and a place to hide
But I can get another one
And I’ll play for Magdalena as we ride
No llores, mi querida
Dios nos vigila
Soon the horse will take us to Durango
Agarrame, mi vida
Soon the desert will be gone
Soon you will be dancing the fandango
Past the Aztec ruins and the ghosts of our people
Hoofbeats like castanets on stone
At night I dream of bells in the village steeple
Then I see the bloody face of Ramon
Was it me that shot him down in the cantina
Was it my hand that held the gun?
Come, let us fly, my Magdalena
The dogs are barking and what’s done is done
No Ilores, mi querida
Dios nos vigila
Soon the horse will take us to Durango
Agarrame, mi vida
Soon the desert will be gone
Soon you will be dancing the fandango
At the corrida we’ll sit in the shade
And watch the young torero stand alone
We’ll drink tequila where our grandfathers stayed
When they rode with Villa into Torreón
Then the padre will recite the prayers of old
In the little church this side of town
I will wear new boots and an earring of gold
You’ll shine with diamonds in your wedding gown
The way is long but the end is near
Already the fiesta has begun
The face of God will appear
With His serpent eyes of obsidian
No Ilores, mi querida
Dio nos vigila
Soon the horse will take us to Durango
Agarrame, mi vida
Soon the desert will be gone
Soon you will be dancing the fandango
Was that the thunder that I heard?
My head is vibrating, I feel a sharp pain
Come sit by me, don’t say a word
Oh, can it be that I am slain?
Quick, Magdalena, take my gun
Look up in the hills, that flash of light
Aim well my little one
We may not make it through the night
No Ilores, mi querida
Dios nos vigila
Soon the horse will take us to Durango
Agarrame, mi vida
Soon the desert will be gone
Soon you will be dancing the fandango
WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN AND JACQUES LEVY
Copyright © 1975 by Ram's Horn Music; renewed 2003 by Ram’s Horn Music
Bob Dylan - Romance in Durango (Official Audio)
Teri Garr on how she got the part in "Young Frankenstein" (1974)
I have always been a fan of Teri Garr and this below goes some way to explain how and why . . .
"I did the movie 'The Conversation' (1974) with Gene Hackman, (another favourite film) like one scene. It was a completely straight scene. Then I got 'Young Frankenstein’ (another favourite) after that and, yeah, that was my big break. And I went and auditioned at, like, a cattle call, 500 girls there. I think Farrah Fawcett was one of them. Everyone was auditioning for the part of the fiancee, and Mel Brooks kept saying, 'I want Madeline Kahn, but she doesn't want to do it.' She'd just done Mel's movie 'Blazing Saddles’ (1974) (yeah you got it! another fave!). And then finally one day, it was like my third call back, and he said, 'Unfortunately, Madeline is going to do the part of the fiancee, but if you can come back tomorrow with a German accent, I'll let you audition for the lab assistant.' I said, 'OK. Tomorrow? I have until tomorrow to get a German accent.' So I had to just jump in and do it, which I did, and it was great. It was really a great experience."
Garr has said that she based her accent on Cher's wig maker, with whom she worked on "The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour."
"I like Cher. I still see her once in a while. I see her. I don't recognise her, but I see her."
One afternoon while shooting, Anne Bancroft (Mel Brooks' wife) visited the set and told Garr that she and Mel had seen "The Conversation" the night before, and Garr replied, "Oh, yeah, that turned out to be a pretty good movie."
Bancroft responded, "Honey, THIS is a movie. 'The Conversation' is a film."
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